Dark Century involves you guiding your squad of super tanks into a face-off against the enemy's team. The game itself is quite boring; you wander around glancing at the scanner hoping to lock on to the enemy. The game plays in a 3D environment – or rather, scaled sprites move along a bare battleground. While the graphics are OK and the presentation is impressive, it just isn't a game you will want to stay with. Just watch the demo mode and you will realise this is a bland game indeed. There's a great tune that plays throughout, though. A pointless attempt at converting a poorly rated 16-bit game.

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Only the élite may join the Guardian Warriors, and those who wish to join must pass a test. Four levels of non-stop shoot-'em-up action, each consisting of three different types of gameplay, await you. The 'combat zone' is a platform game, the 'flight zone' is a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up in a spaceship, and the 'alien zone' again sees you in a spaceship, but battling a single enormous monster. There's nothing new here in terms of gameplay, although the graphics are absolutely beautiful, and the loading screen is marvellous. However, the music is annoying and the gameplay is maddeningly difficult as your energy is drained very quickly. I certainly won't be joining the Guardian Warriors soon!

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Darkman
(Ocean, 1991)

Scientist Peyton Westlake was trying to develop a synthetic skin, when gangsters beat him up and demolished his laboratory, leaving him with terrible facial scarring. Now he seeks revenge upon those who destroyed his work and his life, and rescue his girlfriend, Julie Hastings, from the clutches of Louis Strack. This game follows the events of the film over six levels, and mixes platform and beat-'em-up elements. There are also some utterly pointless sub-games between levels where you take photos of faces in an attempt to create a mask. The graphics are wonderful and the tune on the menu is very atmospheric. Unfortunately the difficulty level is too high; you are only given one life, and completing the first level alone takes a lot of practice.

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Dark Side
(Incentive, 1988)
Reviewed by Chris Lennard

Using Freescape, this took 3D gaming to a whole new level when it was released. In a battle against time, you have to negotiate your way around the surface of the moon Tricuspid, destroying ECDs that are powering up an enormous doomsday weapon that is targeted at the planet Evath. Confronting you are a myriad of fiendish puzzles which must be solved in order to complete your mission. Admittedly the sound is poor and there is no music but when you consider what was achieved this remains a seminal game.

See also: Driller.

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9

The King of Lightwurlde is having problems with some enormous molehills that have appeared in his garden, so Narud Pendaryn decides to investigate. However, Narud falls into one of the molehills and ends up in Darkwurlde. Narud must explore the lair of Darkwurlde and kill all the moles. As you would expect, Darkwurlde is filled with monsters which fly about the screen, and Narud will lose one of his five lives if he touches them. Much of the scenery, such as fires and poisonous plants, is also to be avoided. The influence of Ultimate's games really shows here, but this game isn't as good as those of Ultimate (as the author himself admits!). The graphics are OK, but firing at the monsters can be tricky and it's easy to lose lives unnecessarily.

See also: Pyra Mydya.

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5

Now's your chance to play in a darts tournament without the need to drink lots of beer! You can take part in a tournament or take a 'round the clock' test, or even play against a friend. You fire darts by moving an animated hand diagonally to the right sector. The tournament is a bit easy and you should sail through the quarter- and semi-finals without any fuss, but beating Jammy Jim in the final is another matter entirely! The default colour scheme is horrible, but thankfully, you can change it. The digitised speech is awesome, too, with shouts of "180!" each time you get that score – brilliant!

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8

Hobbo the elf and Thor the warrior must explore the 27 levels of the underground kingdom of Dawnssley. Each level is a fairly small maze filled with corridors, doors and generators from which monsters emerge. Keys can be collected, but you will need to be selective in which doors you can open, and you will need to save keys for later levels. This is a very poor Gauntlet clone with mediocre graphics and annoying sound effects. Most of the doors are made up of two or more segments, and it is far too easy to waste one or more keys when opening these doors, which means you won't have enough keys later on. The scrolling is also frustratingly slow, which ruins what is already a poor game.

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Operation Overlord took place on the 6th of June 1944 during World War II, when Allied soldiers launched a massive assault on the Germans who were occupying France. It was the most important event of the war, and this game has 40 missions for you to try out. Twenty of these see you commanding a small group of soldiers, trying to kill all the enemy soldiers, tanks and bunkers. The other twenty involve commanding a group of parachutists and ensuring they all land in the correct place, although these missions are much easier than the infantry missions. The graphics are great, especially if you're using a Plus machine, where they're even better! The game even includes two of Loriciel's previous releases, Advanced Destroyer Simulator and Sherman M4. Great stuff, I say.

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9

The wealthy industralist, Marshall Robner, was found dead at his mansion in the early hours of yesterday morning. An examination by a coroner suggests that he died from an overdose of the anti-depressant Ebullion – but suspicions remain, and you have just twelve hours to solve the mystery. This is the first in Infocom's line of mysteries, and it's good. It's also very challenging; you have to examine everything closely, and remember to analyse objects for fingerprints and other substances. While you're doing this, there are six other characters who do their own thing, and you'll need to ask them questions, show things to them, and watch what they're doing. Fans of murder mysteries will certainly enjoy this game, although the difficulty may put some people off.

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8

The Emperor's beautiful daughter has been captured, so what does Spartacus do? He sets out to rescue her, of course. First, Spartacus must find six pieces of a scroll before going to the palace to rescue the princess. Unfortunately, the forest is full of skeletons who will attack you ferociously, and touching any of the magic stones releases a ghost that will drain your energy quite severely. The graphics aren't that bad although they are lacking in colour, and the sound effects are sparse. The game, though, is too difficult, and it's frustrating to get Spartacus to jump on to a platform. The magic stones are really irritating as well.

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